There was Rob to think about, too. I had taken the view that we were both grown-ups – that as long as we were honest with one another, we could do what we liked and get away unscathed. It didn’t seem to be working out that way. I didn’t want to get hurt, and I didn’t want to hurt Rob, either. The tight, low-cut jumper was looking more and more like a bad idea. I went into my room and hunted for something less flashy while Mum moved seamlessly from, ‘I knew Abby was a bad choice – he should never have married her’ to ‘at least one of you got married. People are always asking me about you’.
‘Well, you don’t need to tell them anything. There’s nothing to say.’ I held up a long black crew-necked jumper with a hole in the sleeve, the kind of thing you put on when you’ve got flu and feel like death and need to wear something that matches your mood. Perfect. A nun’s habit would have been more alluring. ‘Look, I’ve got to go, Mum. I’ve got someone coming over for dinner.’
‘A man?’
‘Just a friend.’ I crossed my fingers, then uncrossed them. That was exactly what Rob was, after all. ‘A colleague. No one you know.’ If she knew it was Rob, she would get unreasonably excited. Weirdly, although he fulfilled none of the many criteria she had for potential husbands, she utterly adored him.
‘It would have to be someone from work. You have no life outside of that job.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘You’re right, Mum. Can I call you tomorrow?’
A short, wounded pause. ‘Yes. Make sure you do.’
‘I will.’ The promise sounded hollow even to my ears. I might call her, though. If I was in a masochistic mood.
I put down the phone, but before I could change, there was a knock on the door. With a muttered curse I went to answer it and found Rob standing in the hall, burdened with three bags of shopping. ‘How did you get into the house?’
‘One of your neighbours took pity on me.’ I took a moment to wonder who – Chris? – and he put down the bags. ‘Is this as far as I’m getting? Should I make plans to cook out here?’
‘Sorry. Come in.’ He gathered up his things and strode past me as I reflected I needn’t have worried about changing my clothes – he had barely glanced at me. I waited until he was inside to ask, ‘Which neighbour?’
‘A female. Eastern European, if I had to guess. Nice smile.’
‘That’ll be Szuszanna. She’s Hungarian – works as a nanny, according to my landlord. I haven’t met her yet. All I can tell you is that she has a heavy tread and likes music from West End shows. It was the soundtrack from
Carousel
last night.’
‘Interesting choice.’
‘You haven’t lived until you’ve heard “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on repeat at three in the morning.’
‘Maybe she’s a Liverpool fan.’
‘That is always a possibility.’ I watched Rob walk around the living room, inspecting the furnishings, and found myself glad that it hadn’t been Chris who had let him in. In any comparison, Chris came off worse. Rob was lean and fit, a physical match for me in every way, where Chris was slight and wiry. Rob had confidence to burn while Chris was like an ever-hopeful but much-kicked dog. Beneath the easy manner, Rob was pure steel. Chris, on the evidence of his behaviour around my brother, was not. I felt sorry for Chris, sorry that he seemed to like me, sorry that I couldn’t imagine feeling the same way. And sorry for myself that I couldn’t and shouldn’t think that way about Rob.
Friends. We are just friends
. What I had been thinking, I assured myself, meant nothing, except that I was capable of appreciating him, in a purely aesthetic way. All of which went to prove that the road from self-awareness to comforting denial was a short and frequently travelled one for me.
Rob, oblivious to my emotional confusion, had finished looking around. ‘This is all right. Where’s the kitchen?’
‘Behind you.’ I pointed. It was little more than a cubbyhole off the sitting room, big enough for a basic cooker, fridge and sink and not much else.
‘If I unpack the shopping, there won’t be room to prepare the food.’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘Only someone who hated cooking would have rented this place.’
‘Brilliant deduction. What’s your next trick?’
‘I’m glad you asked. I’m going to make your inhibitions disappear.’ He didn’t wait to see how I reacted, just carried one bag into the kitchen and started rummaging in it. Tuneful whistling floated out into the hall: Rob was in a good mood.
I sat down on the edge of the sofa to try to recover some composure. I was suddenly aware that I was way out of my depth. It was nice that everyone – including me – had been so concerned about Rob’s romantic well-being. I was beginning to realise I should be a lot more worried about my own.
‘For God’s sake, Maeve. I thought I’d bought everything you could possibly need. Who doesn’t have a wooden spoon?’
‘Me. But try the boxes.’
Rob gave me a very unenthusiastic look before addressing himself to the pile in the hall. Cooking had come to a premature halt when he opened a drawer and discovered the shortcomings of the kitchen extended beyond its size and the constantly dripping tap. It was, it seemed, impossible to cook spaghetti Bolognese from scratch without a wooden spoon. Who knew?
I leaned against the wall and watched him methodically work through the boxes.
‘You could help.’
‘You’re doing fine.’
‘This doesn’t count as cooking, so you don’t get a free pass on it.’ A box landed at my feet. ‘Get hunting.’
The box contained sheets, I discovered, and towels. I had never seen any of them before. ‘Try again.’
‘I think I’ve struck gold.’ Rob crouched down beside the last box in the pile and lifted out a stack of saucepans. ‘Here we go. A wooden spoon. I knew you’d have one somewhere.’
‘Mum must have put it in. What else is in that box?’
‘A sieve, baking tins – cooking stuff. And cutlery. No plates.’
‘They must be somewhere else,’ I said, distracted. ‘I’ve never owned a sieve.’
‘Well, you do now.’ He twirled it by the handle. ‘I love your mum. She’s thought of everything.’
‘Oh yeah, she’s great.’ My voice was loaded with sarcasm. ‘Everything in that box is designed to make me feel bad for not being remotely domestic.’
‘It is useful,’ Rob said carefully, ‘to be able to feed yourself without having to resort to the takeaways section of the Yellow Pages.’
‘There’s always toast.’
‘You frighten me. How all your teeth haven’t fallen out from vitamin deficiency, I’ll never know.’
I grinned at him to prove I still had a full set. ‘Toast with Marmite. Toast with jam. Cheese on toast. Beans on toast. All the major food groups. It’s the perfect food.’
‘Well, you’re not having toast tonight.’
‘I am actually looking forward to a proper meal,’ I admitted, trailing him back to the kitchen where he got on with scraping chopped onion into one of the saucepans. ‘So you were more than a little mysterious about your case. What’s the mess you’re clearing up?’
‘Remember that domestic in Chiswick a couple of weeks ago? Morty arrested the husband? The victim was Andrea Tancredi. Strangled with the electrical cord of her hairdryer.’
I did remember. DS Mortimer had spent a long time telling everyone how easy the case had been to clear up. Art Mortimer was a large, bearded, untidy man and spent most days wandering the office like the last lonely mastodon on a perpetual quest for a primeval forest to call his own. Godley kept him on the team because he had years of experience and a gift for getting confessions from people, but he was not the most dynamic of police officers.
‘Ray Tancredi, the husband, was having financial trouble. His property business was seriously in the shit. The house was burgled on the day of the murder – or at least, that was what we were supposed to think. Broken window, safe hanging open, money and jewellery missing – oh, and Mrs Tancredi’s rapidly cooling body in the master bedroom. The SOCOs found blood on the window that matched Tancredi, and there was a fresh cut on his right forearm. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to have a look for the jewellery that was missing in places where he had been, and Morty found it in Tancredi’s locker at his golf club. He’d been golfing with his best friend that afternoon – that was his alibi for the murder.’
‘So he definitely staged the burglary.’
‘Definitely.’ Rob paused in the middle of chopping a mushroom. ‘All of this talking is making me thirsty.’
‘Do you want a glass of wine?’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’
I levered the cork out of a bottle of ruby-coloured South African Shiraz and poured the wine into two mismatched glasses.
‘Go back to Ray Tancredi. What happened next?’
‘He was arrested, interviewed and charged with murder. He admitted staging the burglary, but denied the murder. And in fairness, he did seem pretty shocked about his wife’s death.’
‘That means nothing,’ I said, hitching myself up on to the work surface beside the cooker. ‘Remorse.’
‘That is a remarkably inconvenient place for you to sit, by the way.’
‘There’s nowhere else.’ There really wasn’t.
‘I can’t believe you’re willing to put up with this kitchen.’
I shrugged. ‘Converted flats always mean compromises. I like old houses. I like the living room and the bedroom. Plus the rent is cheap for a furnished flat. I can live with the crappy kitchen and the bathroom.’
‘The living room is nice,’ Rob agreed. In addition to the bay window, it was big, with a high ceiling and wide wooden floorboards. The original fireplace was still there, even if it had been coated in a thick layer of white emulsion. I had had visions of myself curled up on the big grey sofa drinking tea, looking out at the trees blowing in the breeze. Maybe while someone else was cooking dinner, I found myself thinking, watching Rob move deftly around the tiny space.
He looked at me, eyebrows raised, and I realised I’d missed something. ‘Huh?’
‘What’s wrong with the bathroom?’
‘It’s just a little bit tired, that’s all.’ That was the landlord’s euphemism for a permanent limescale mark that scarred the bath, and a loo with a chipped cistern lid. The shower was no great shakes either. ‘Look, I’m not going to be staying here for ever. It’s good enough for a few months.’
‘Mm.’ A smile he couldn’t hide was turning the corners of his mouth up.
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘Classic Kerrigan. This’ll do for the time being even though you could probably have found something nicer if you’d bothered. As long as it’s not a permanent commitment, you’re happy with good enough.’
I looked at him warily. ‘Are you still talking about the flat?’
‘Mostly.’
I chose not to pursue it. ‘How did you get involved in clearing up a mess? So far you’ve got Ray Tancredi in prison. That seems fair enough.’
‘It did indeed. The only trouble was, he didn’t do it.’
‘You shock me.’
‘I was shocked myself. I was only involved because I got stuck with doing Morty’s donkeywork for the investigation into Tancredi’s financial difficulties, because they wanted to prove he was after Andrea’s life insurance. I was supposed to be chasing up the Production Orders we’d sent his bank. The CPS wanted a full record of his affairs for the last couple of years and the bank was, as usual, completely ignoring the request. Morty was off doing something more glamorous so I took the call when a Mrs Penny Quentin rang up and asked if a detective could come to see her to discuss information she had relating to the Tancredi case.’
‘Mrs Penny Quentin being?’
‘Mrs Penny Quentin being a total fox, even though she’s not as young as she used to be – knock-out figure, blond hair, high heels, the works. In addition, Mrs Penny Quentin was Andrea Tancredi’s friend – or at least, she was supposed to be. Penny is also married to Eric Quentin, who was Ray Tancredi’s best mate and golfing companion on the afternoon in question.’
I looked at him with mock severity. ‘Don’t tell me you flirted with the lady.’
‘I didn’t have to. She told me everything she knew almost as soon as I walked in. And what she knew – and could prove – was that her husband had arranged the whole thing. He’d got in touch with some lads who were prepared to do the job for ten grand each. She had emails, phone records, a bank statement that showed a one-off cash withdrawal of twenty thousand before the murder – the works. He had no idea that she knew all of his passwords, or that she was watching what he was doing so closely.’
‘Where did he find the lads?’
‘Eric grew up in a rough bit of Basildon. Even though he’d gone up in the world, he found it useful to stay in touch with a few old friends. A couple of phone calls set him up with two goons who were happy to commit murder as long as they got paid for it. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty, understandably. He knew Ray was having money troubles so he encouraged him to stage the burglary and make an insurance claim for the jewellery. Eric knew a man who knew a jeweller who would buy the stuff that had been stolen without asking too many questions about where it had come from. Ray was desperate for cash to keep his business afloat, so he went along with it. He left work at lunchtime, dashed home, broke the window and took the jewellery. Andrea was usually at the gym at that time of day. We found her car in the garage – he wouldn’t have known she’d never left the house.’
‘Didn’t he see the body?’
Rob shook his head. ‘Everything that was stolen came from the safe in the study, downstairs. He was in a hurry – he just grabbed and ran. He must have got the shock of his life when he found out she had been there all along. Eric couldn’t have known he would make such a balls-up of the burglary, but Ray played into his hands. And then Eric took him off for a round of golf, just a bit too late to be a convincing alibi for murder.’
‘Why did Eric want to have Andrea killed?’
‘Eric and Andrea were having an affair. From what Penny said, Andrea was a total bitch. Eric had told her he was planning to leave Penny and get a divorce, but not so he could settle down with Andrea. Eric has been knocking off his secretary, Saskia, who is twenty-six to Eric’s forty-five, in case you were wondering. Penny said it was a classic mid-life crisis, right on cue. Saskia is one of your high-maintenance types and she wants a ring on her finger. Eric is head over heels, according to Penny, and is prepared to do whatever she asks.’